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<********’ she’s pretty—

It was such a vapid, baseline thought. A cursory impulse that zipped through him like a current made of longing. The brief touch setting off a spark that left him slack jawed, dumb headed, quirking a smile in her direction. He wanted to say something charming, the words were right there on the tip of his silver tongue, and then?

And then she was saying his name, asking him personal questions and he realized he should know her. Her name, at least. Not just the fact that her dimples made her look some magical brand of forever young (like adding high beams to a smile.) Or that he thought her laugh bubbled light as a rich girl's champagne.

It would’ve been one thing if she hadn’t known his name!! But she did. She remembered him as more than just a set of features atop a frame, or a personality turned up to twelve while ensconced in neon flare and lung-destroying bass vibes. A ******** shame that he was s**t for brains with names, always, to this day. With people he knew, even. And so everyone got nicknames, personal touches, things they learned to find endearing when he slid them out because he’d die before admitting he forgot their government assigned vowels and some consonants to boot — that he likely couldn’t spell it right either!

“Ohm, yeah! Hey—“ His fingers twitched away and he tried his best not to look like he was sweating in the produce aisle while his brain caught fire. Because ‘sexy’ was not a name. Sarah didn’t fit her face. Foxxy was a character from some show, right? And he didn’t remember it being that funny, but it made for good background noise to doze off to. “—yooouuu…?” Well ********. “Heh..yeah..and the holidays were…” A shadow crossed his face and he frowned momentarily, looking for a good description, a firing squad, for the whole of the peach pile to topple over and give him a damn good reason to divert his failing course!

Because the holidays—-

My husband's, lover's, little brother (who happens to also be my lover) was kidnapped, and then tortured, and then—

Yeah, no. I can’t say that.

The only rebirth that happens on Christmas every year is the one where my friends keep miraculously coming back to life! From the dead, from the void, from kidnappings into space by robots—

That is even ******** worse, how is it worse?!

He’d had good holidays, he knew he had! Ones that weren’t shadowed by near catastrophe and life shattering changes. He got normal gifts, he had regular sex, there were mistletoe kisses and drunken nights spent sprawled under well lit trees; ones not haunted by singing animals, ghosts, or massive spiders! He only had to pick one, stick with it, and make it sound convincing.

“Yanno? They probably could’ve used a little more ‘you’ in them.” A wince crossed his faltering smile as his hand fell away entirely from the out of season fruit. Who needed peaches in winter anyways? “And you’re gonna think I’m the biggest a** for this, but I’ve blanked your name so hard. Not your face. Never that..but…” A half rolled shrug of shoulders, the gesture echoing ‘I tried my messy best’.

It was the finger guns that broke him, leaving him snorting an ugly, semi-smothered laugh; the kind that krinkled his nose and showed all of his teeth well before he could school his expression into ‘polite store company’ pleasantness.

‘You’re in public, Waru. If people think you’re cracking up over the fruit they will call security on you!’

His internal dialogue ran the color of warning red, overflowing with loud reminders as he coughed fakely to cover his own shame at forgetting the unforgettable and looking loony while doing so. He thought he maybe needed to stop meeting so many women with A, B, C, ‘E’ names, and men with ‘E’ names, and — because gods — but she looked like an ‘E’ — Ellen? Eleanor? Eve? Beverly without the B?! If he squinted he could tell himself that she had ‘first woman alive’ vibes, or was blessed to be a natural blond, or —

That he needed to flat out *stop*, just, ********. If it was going to be like this? The whole of the world — the whole of a city that seemed endless, bottomless, limitless! And yet somehow, his doings did always manage to catch up to him; like invisible clotheslines, garrote-wire sharp and if he wasn’t just the happiest soon-to-be headless man this side of the continent, what with the way he ran into them at a sprint!

“I appreciate your pre-planning my excuses for me,” Rubbing the back of his neck self-consciously as he said a tiny prayer to the fluorescent gods above. That maybe a light might crack open and whatever chemicals leaked out would trigger an alarm, sparing him from digging himself a deeper hole. He stared at the ceiling, at her chest (Damn), at her eyes (Pretty!) because that was where his eyes needed to be!!

“But if taking off the makeup is the only reason I can taste your name on the tip of my tongue, but not recall it? Then I should probably be taken out back and — ******** — idunno? Flogged with one of the display pineapples…” A half-hearted shrug that shifted his mind enough that it wandered down slippery slopes filled with fruit facts and waiting pitfalls full of distractions. “Like, maybe a less ripe one…Did you know the cores eat you as you eat them? That’s —“ But no! No. He was not letting himself get ******** distracted, the pretty lady was asking him questions and he was gagging for her name without bluntly asking for it and— *oh*

He skipped over Christmas shaped landmines and set his teeth into asks he could actually answer, ignoring the way he wanted to squirm ever so slightly beneath her too-sweet gaze; all angelic doe-ness, almost too angelic for him.

Like being in the room with a predator, but lacking the smarts to know it.

“I do….” A slow, dawning blink, cogs turning in a machine desperately screaming for a lubricant of any kind. He remembered when he’d gone to Kor to get more. How long had he only had the one sleeve before deciding he needed another? That the skin he was in needed to be covered — but only tastefully so — and he planned on letting Kiyoshi do his back piece since his old artist was MIA. Which meant— “This whole sleeve is technically new, I got it done in stages…and then some. But—uhm-h-how long ago did you say we met again?” Nervous scrutinizing as he shifted his stance subconsciously.

“No, you didn’t—“ catching his bottom lip between his teeth in thought, he never knew what to do with his hands like this, wondering if the non-existent heat of the aisle was the reason he felt like sweating; instead of how her gaze was so unrelenting that it left him feeling the slightest bit flayed in a speech in his underwear kinda way.

Which wasn’t even the slightest bit fair because he could-he could-he could place her form — that plush give — the kinda at-ease confidence that made him wonder if he should be kneeling in the aisle?

He knew the bra color of the first girl he’d slept with, the make and model of her roadster, the texture of the pinstripes along its beat-up side —

Could name the exact shade of red in Ei’s favorite thong—

Knew the kind of lace Noa liked to wear least of ********, remembering the names of people though!

He swore he could remember the brilliant galaxy-laced eyes and downy brunette curls of thr last-last-last, finalmost one night stand!

He swore he was good with names—

‘When I bother to ask for them.’

Which he so often didn’t, and even when he did? Nicknames were always easier, rhythmic, slid happily off his tongue and nobody ever got mad if they had a personal moniker that was only for them and them alone! He had to remind himself of that fact, and that bathroom stalls and dimly lit parties in disused rec-yards had become less appealing after he’d made some minor life changes; slipped a pair of rings on, made a home of his team, and grown so close to them that he almost couldn’t find where they ended and he began.

That he didn’t often miss lumpy couches filled with wayward springs, or the chill touch of rebar, or the roughness of hard on the knees concrete that put the ‘quickly’ in ‘quickie’. Not when there were actual, wonderful, softer than gods breasts in a push-up-bra *beds* he was welcome in!

That all of this was also a hell of a lot easier when the many people he met kept the same names he’d met them with instead flying through two, or three, or four. Purifying out, corrupting in. It made him grateful for the consistency he’d come to know, even when the mere sound of the words ‘routine’ and ‘safe’ chafed at his senses. But he tried not to think of the endlessly rotating roster he’d once run himself through like a blaze in a gasoline gauntlet. Or about how it hadn’t used to be so hard to pluck up a name of someone who he knew he should’ve remembered. The lines didn’t used to blurr this much. Not between his powered life and his civilian one.

“What can I say? I like it rough. Hell, I’m starting to think I do this kinda s**t to myself on purpose at this point…” A wry look, like he was suffering something self-inflicted, like he didn’t know where to start without offering her a stiff coffee and some Tylenol as payment for whatever he’d spew out the second he thought she was offering to listen. Like a piss poor method of self defense—

Because he’d spent a whole year getting the sleeve done, hadn’t he? Longer, even. Somewhere in that timing his ink had been complete and then there came the rings — the vows — how both those events with Eion had come in separate sets and spaced out in a span of one happening half a year after the other. Hell, Ren’s had come another nine months after that, and some days? He didn’t know why he’d made the man wait. Or wished that he’d known the silver haired man’s feelings sooner; or that he could go back and do all the good parts over again.

But none of this was about that so much as it was about learning a name!!

“How’s about..I offer to pay for your peaches, and you give me a hint? Just a little one! Cause no one who bothers to remember me deserves to be forgotten by me.” He looked damn proud of himself for a moment, like he’d found just the key to shove into the mystery lock, and was hoping with enough wiggle it’d click over.

“No, you don't, do you?” Spoken almost absently as his thoughts were drawn away from offering produce on bent knee like it’d remedy the situation he’d created for himself. He was reaching the upper limits of his own limited mental bandwidth; grasping at glowing dots of memory as his gaze trailed shamelessly over the points her fingers ghosted. The way pleasant mental images slowly formed, even with cloth in the way, because he swore he could envision clearly the tint of the ink, and how it would sit across her pale, rosy skin. Something familiar, strange, bold and earthen. But he was so used to the typical; a hidden butterfly on the inner thigh — a Winnie the Pooh on an ankle — hastily covered stick and pokes scratched over with floral motifs and loved ones birthdays.

Spokes and swords and shieldmaidens —-

It was a stereotype that girls liked ‘kittens’ and ‘Disney’ far more than lions, dragons, and weaponry. An incorrect one, but that fact alone made someone like — ******** — like the girl before him stand out even more, didn’t it?

‘God's….I must look like a fruit aisle creep..I’m going on a ******** watch list for being a produce peruser!’

He wasn’t quite sure how long he’d been mulling his thoughts over, staring, till his gaze snapped up and he quit chewing on his bottom lip thoughtlessly.

"Y’know? Y’really don't look like a Guinevere? Or is it Gwyneth Paltrow...." He wondered aloud. But no, nothing about the woman before him suggested that she had a side-hustle selling hoo-joo items with questionable names at astronomical prices. Nothing screamed ‘G’ — not with ‘E’s sitting heavy enough on the top of his tongue, swirling his thoughts bitingly.

Because something ‘E-shaped’ felt so damn right—-

“But you do look like an Elaine—-“ Hopeful purr, and he rushed to hedge his sure-feeling bet with heaped compliments. His own version of a more salacious than average apology. Because how could he have misplaced something as important as her name——

And wasn’t he a lucky ******** dog that she was being so damn nice about it!

“You also look really good dressed down all casual-like, but y’gotta know that too? Yeh? S’just something about gray sweats n’ah messy bun…isn’t just for guy-candy on screens….”